Fr. Robert D Smith

The Other Side of Christ

What The Missionaries Taught First
The secular media are by no means as secular, as neutral about religion as they claim to be.
They teach a form of religion, and they teach us how to think about specific religions. They continually
present the idea that religion is concerned with ritual observances, that Catholicism, for example, is a
matter of learning the Sign of the Cross, the Our Father, the Hail Mary and the Apostle's Creed, and
that advanced learning in Catholicism includes being able to list the cardinal sins, the gifts of the Holy
Spirit, and the corporal and spiritual works of mercy; but what did the missionaries teach? Was it a
matter, first of all, of teaching the pagans how to make the Sign of the Cross, to pray the Our Father
and the Hail Mary" No...as important as these and other things are, they all come second, after something else.
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